A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

The 'zemstvo men' were unlikely pioneers of the revolution. Most of them were noble landowners, progressive and practical men like Prince Lvov, who simply wanted the monarchy to play a positive role in improving the life of its subjects. They sought to increase the influence of the zemstvos in the framing of government legislation, but the notion of leading a broad opposition movement was repugnant to them. Prince Lvov's mentor, D. N. Shipov, who organized the zemstvos at a national level, was himself a devoted monarchist and flatly opposed the liberal demand for a constitution. The whole purpose of his work was to strengthen the autocracy by bringing the Tsar closer to his people, organized through the zemstvos and a consultative parliament. In many ways he was trying to create from below the same popular autocracy which Nicholas was aiming to impose from above in the last years of his reign. Central to his liberal Slavophilism was the notion of Russia as 'a locally self-governing land with an autocratic Sovereign at its head'. He believed in the ancient communion between the Tsar and his people, a union which, in his view, had been broken only by the 'autocracy of the bureaucracy'.¹³

There was plenty of ground, then, for the autocracy to reach an accommodation with the 'zemstvo men'. But, as so often during its inexorable downfall, the old regime chose repression instead of compromise and thus created the political hostility of the zemstvos. The chief architect of this suicidal policy was the all-powerful Ministry of the Interior, which regarded the zemstvos as dangerous havens for revolutionaries and subjected them to a relentless campaign of persecution. Armed with the statute of 1890, the provincial governors capped the zemstvos' budgets, censored their publications and removed or arrested the elected members of their boards.

The famine crisis brought a temporary halt to this conflict, for the government relied on the zemstvos as agencies of food and medical relief. But, by expanding their activities, the crisis also encouraged the zemstvos to reassert their own demands for autonomy and reform. The lead was taken by the zemstvo professionals — the teachers, doctors, statisticians and agronomists commonly known as the Third Element — whose radical influence on the zemstvo assemblies was increased as a result of their direct participation in the relief campaigns. They were followed by many landowners, who blamed the famine on the government's failure to protect the nation's farmers and were worried that the destitute peasants would seize their estates. They now rallied behind the

zemstvos to defend the agrarian interests of provincial society against the industrializing bureaucracy of St Petersburg. The more liberal nobles, like Prince Lvov, went on to demand the creation of an all-class zemstvo at the volost level (which they believed would help to integrate the peasants into local government) and the convocation of a national assembly. This was the inspiration behind the Tver Address, presented to Nicholas II on his accession to the throne by the country's most progressive zemstvo leaders. In a speech that infuriated public opinion the new Tsar denounced such 'senseless dreams' and emphasized his 'firm and unflinching' adherence to the 'principle of autocracy'. Within days, the Ministry of the Interior resumed its persecution of the zemstvos. Shipov's All-Zemstvo Organization was banned soon after its foundation in 1896, forcing the reluctant revolutionary into the arms of the more radical constitutionalists. Together they formed Beseda (Symposium) in 1899, a clandestine discussion circle of liberal 'zemstvo men', including some of the grandest names of the Russian aristocracy, as well as Prince Lvov, which met in the Moscow palace of the Dolgorukov princes. To begin with, Beseda confined its discussion to zemstvo affairs. But in 1900 the government once again stepped up its campaign of persecution, ordering the dismissal of hundreds of liberals from the zemstvos' elected boards, and this inevitably forced the genteel symposium to confront political questions. Over the next two years it would become the leading force in the constitutional movement, as a wide range of public men, from civic leaders to the captains of industry, rallied behind its call for reform.¹⁴